


Sings the Tune without the Words

by FrenchTwistResistance



Category: Chilling Adventures of Sabrina (TV 2018)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-25
Updated: 2019-02-25
Packaged: 2019-11-05 07:12:06
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,020
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17914208
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FrenchTwistResistance/pseuds/FrenchTwistResistance
Summary: They’re a couple but not. It’s nobody’s business and everybody’s business and discussed and not discussed.





	Sings the Tune without the Words

It’s one of those things. One of those unspoken, half-known, whispered, rumored things.

Two women living together, running a business together, raising a child together.

Some people insist they’re sisters. Others insist they're friends. But others insist they’re more. And still others ignore as much as they can, pretend they don’t have theories.

It’s one of those things. They’re a couple but not. It’s nobody’s business and everybody’s business and discussed and not discussed.

Even in the coven where they’d been all their lives, there is a tacit understanding and misunderstanding. The younger witches all think something different, certainly, than the older witches. Or perhaps they just think it in a different same way.

The terminology and logic of it changes. 

Boston marriage, romantic friendship, gal pals. 

It’s a different world now, and people just say whatever they want sometimes.

xxx

Hilda is at the grocery store, and the cashier is ringing her up, and his pimply face contorts, and he says,

“I’m sorry we’re out of French roast coffee. I know your wife prefers that.”

“No worries. Zelda likes Colombian almost as well,” Hilda says before she realizes what she’s agreeing with. It sticks in her ribs.

“Carton of Lucky Strikes?” the cashier says even as he’s reaching beneath the counter. Hilda’s mind is still buzzing, circling.

“Yes,” she says. She slips a toe in the water, to gauge something in him or maybe herself. “I keep telling the misses she ought not smoke, but what is a wife if not stubborn?”

The cashier reappears with the carton. He might barely be seventeen, but still he pretends he knows:

“The old ball and chain gets what she wants so we get what we want, am I right?” Hilda’s body is all heat and fretting, but she says,

“So right.”

She pays and leaves, lets a different teenager heave the grocery bags into her trunk, still thinking and feeling and wondering whether she should laugh or cry.

xxx

The mortal woman is about sixty and regal and straight-backed and taciturn. She sits across the desk from Zelda, dabbing at the corner of an eye with a monogrammed handkerchief. Her mascara remains perfect somehow, and Zelda can respect that.

“I don’t know what I’ll do without him.”

Her husband of forty years has recently succumbed to a heart attack.

Hilda would be better at this. But the woman’s eyes are red rimmed, hurting. Zelda says,

“It’s a difficult time for you.”

Their hands on the desk are close to each other. Zelda could pat her gently or something, but she doesn’t.

They look at each other. The bereaved woman says,

“Yes.” Zelda shuffles the papers in front of her, clears her throat.

“I assure you Hilda will be here for the viewing.”

They look at each other again. Zelda is not one to babble, but the woman’s stare is so piercing and so sad that she does:

“She wanted to be here for you today, but we were out of absolutely everything. She figured I could handle the financial matters alone. I suppose she was wrong.”

The woman pats her hand.

“I understand. Your wife is the heart of this operation. But you’re trying. And I do appreciate that.”

Zelda nods. Zelda reels. Wife? What wife? Oh that wife. That wife that’s not a wife. She doesn’t correct her. She’s not sure there’s much to correct.

“Take care, Mrs. Dean. And call if you need anything,” she says, helping the woman into her coat.

xxx

Zelda’s already in bed when Hilda walks in.

Zelda can tell Hilda’s riled up. They hadn’t had dinner together, and Hilda has been bustling around the house finding things to do so they wouldn’t run into each other. But finally she’s run herself around enough that she has to address the issue. Hilda speaks:

“The audacity of some people!”

“To what are you referring? Did someone park too close to you again?” Zelda takes off her reading glasses, sets them and her book on the nightstand.

“Well yes, that also happened to me today, but it’s not what I’m talking about. Some mortal child in town had the presumption—”

“To tell you your outfit today looks like something Mrs. Claus might wear on spring break?”

Hilda looks down at her sweater adorned with various baubles.

“No! And you know each of these ornaments is charmed for a different purpose! No! He very explicitly—”

“Came onto you? Said you were such a sweet thing on the outside that he’d like to suck off the sugar and see if you were sour underneath?”

Hilda’s getting even more riled up, and Zelda is pinching her own thigh beneath the covers so she won’t laugh.

“What?! Of course not!” She says the last in a rush so she won’t be interrupted: “The little imp at the grocery store said he was sorry they were out of French roast because he knows my wife prefers it! That’s you! You’re the wife!”

Zelda does allow herself to laugh then.

“He must’ve been talking to Mrs. Dean,” Zelda says.

“What?”

“I had a similar experience this afternoon. Mrs. Dean said my wife was obviously the sympathetic one at the mortuary. That’s you. You’re the wife.”

The fight leaves Hilda, and she sits on the foot of her own bed.

“Oh,” Hilda says. “That’s just. What everyone thinks, then, is it?” She looks over at Zelda, whose face is calm, placid, totally unfazed by this. “And you don’t care?” Zelda shifts a little in bed.

“We have to keep the whole town half hexed to not notice we don’t age. We don’t have the time or energy to police all of their suspicions. And why should we? It’s harmless supposition.”

Hilda considers but then narrows her eyes.

“You don’t care because you like it!”

Zelda rolls her eyes but does not confirm or deny.

“Go to bed, Hildegard.”

xxx

Zelda sleeps, but Hilda does not. She lies in bed staring at one of her familiars in the corner. She finally decides to just do it. She gives him the go ahead, and he begins spinning, and she begins remembering. She needs the details he can provide to make some decisions.

It was ten years ago at the little bed and breakfast. She and Zelda had decided to have a weekend together. Shop, see some bad dinner theater, smoke some weed, go dancing. They hadn’t wanted to go too far away as Sabrina was young and Ambrose was Ambrose, so there they were in town.

The proprietor looked first at Zelda, in a staid but pretty and well-fitting traveling dress, and then at Hilda, in pleated slacks and a satin blouse and a garish cardigan. Hilda was carrying two matching suitcases in different colors, and Zelda was taking off her gloves to retrieve her checkbook from the purse that also matched the suitcases. 

“One bed?” he said. Hilda opened her mouth, but Zelda said,

“That’s fine.” He smirked, and so did Zelda.

Nothing happened. They cuddled and talked about the things people talk about after a little weed. 

The memory fades as the next one starts, but Hilda remembers wishing a little for something else.

It was five years ago at a parents brunch at the school.

They’d had a fight in the car that had also been resolved in the car. Something petty about what mortal extracurriculars Sabrina should be engaging in. 

They stood in the parking lot, leaning against the car. Zelda pressed her lips to Hilda’s temple and then squeezed her hand.

“I’m sorry, love,” Hilda said. “You’re right, and we’re a united front.”

They hadn’t known the principal had seen this exchange.

They didn’t protest when all morning they were both addressed as Mrs. Spellman.

Hilda asks the spider to stop, but it’s already too late. Flashes of other times, just brief impressions, flit across her brain. Ambrose walking in on them teasing each other in the kitchen wiping flour on and off each other and his embarrassed walking right back out again. Sabrina crawling between them on the couch and lifting their interlaced fingers to slide under their joined arms. The incredulous look on the high priest’s face as they’d walked into their first orgy together, had kissed each other’s cheeks, and parted ways.

She doesn’t even try to sleep.

“Zelds?” she says in the dark. She hears movement, but there’s no indication of wakefulness.

She turns on the lamp.

“Zelds!” Zelda does wake up then. Stares blearily and a touch angrily at her.

“What?”

“I like it, too.”

Zelda blinks.

“You like what?” Zelda says, suspicion edging in her sleepy voice.

“It,” Hilda says. Zelda sits up, turns on her own lamp.

“Bless it, it’s the middle of the night. What are you talking about?”

Hilda edges out of bed, stands in front of Zelda.

“Harmless supposition,” Hilda says. She then kisses Zelda, a closed lip, dry affair. But they’re both more awake now. Zelda opens her mouth, says against Hilda’s lips,

“That’s a little more than supposition. And not harmless in the slightest.” Hilda’s hands are on her shoulders now, pushing back gently.

“Everybody already thinks it about us. Why shouldn’t we?”

“That may very well be the worst reason to do anything,” Zelda says even as she’s letting herself be laid out on her bed. Hilda pulls back from her, blinks,

“What makes you think that’s the only reason?” Zelda takes her hand, rubs her thumb over it.

“I’ve given you so many opportunities. And this is the one you’ve chosen to take.”

“Oh bollocks! You’re just an asshole and a half,” Hilda says as she descends, forces her tongue into Zelda’s mouth. Zelda lets her kiss her with passion and anger and then flips them over. She pins Hilda’s wrists, thrusts her hips.

“I’m the asshole, and you’re the half, and you’re also a fucking tease.” Zelda kisses her, all teeth. “All those times people obliquely insinuated and you just blushed and touched my fingers? Fuck you.” Zelda kisses her again, with a lot of tongue. “All those times people complimented you to me and said, ‘You’re a lucky woman.’ Fuck you.” Zelda lets go of one wrist so she can inch a hand under Hilda’s nightgown. Hilda’s freed hand is in her hair, pulling her face closer. And her own hand is possessive, palpating, squeezing, caressing. “All those times at that insufferable mortal school when someone asked me, ‘Where’s your better half?’ Fuck you.” She pinches Hilda’s nipple, and both of them moan.

“I didn’t know,” Hilda says around Zelda’s tongue. “I didn’t know that’s what they thought. I didn’t know that’s what you wanted.” She arches her back so that her tit is more firmly in Zelda’s hand. “I didn’t know that’s what I wanted.” Zelda pinches harder, kisses harder, surges her hips down harder.

“But now you know,” Zelda says.

“I’d like to know more,” Hilda says. Zelda releases the other wrist, and it immediately goes to her neck, the thumb brushing and skimming along her neck and jaw. “I’d like to know as much as you’re willing to tell me.”

“I don’t want to tell you anything,” Zelda says as she drags a hand to the hem of Hilda’s nightgown, slips beneath it, runs her fingers up a smooth plump thigh. “But I want to show you.”

“Please do,” Hilda says.

Zelda penetrates her with two fingers, fast and hard, and Hilda cries out, moans, begs. They undulate together, giving and taking, telling without telling. Finally, Hilda pants,

“I want to show you, too.”

Zelda circles her clit, presses and presses.

“You already have.”

Hilda comes at Zelda’s fingers.

Zelda, a few minutes later, comes at Hilda’s mouth.

They fall asleep sprawled together in Zelda’s bed.

xxx

“Aunties!” Sabrina shouts at the door.

They’re tangled with each other, and both groggily say,

“Yes?”

Sabrina’s eyes flit to them in Zelda’s bed and then Hilda’s unoccupied bed and then back to them. She doesn’t even flinch.

“I need your help.”

It’s one of those things. One of those unspoken, half-known, whispered, rumored things.

**Author's Note:**

> Kind of a prompt fill for together-as-sisters on tumblr. Caught but not.


End file.
